Humancorp Incorporated Read online

  “-resonance, then, everyone around him will regard him as popular and assertive too, won’t they?”

  Noel considered.

  “Yes,” he said. “For example, when we reprogrammed Eats to be a celebrity chef, everyone started treating him like a celebrity chef. It could work!”

  “Isaac, we could make it so everyone notices you and pays attention to you,” said Sean. “You’d never have to be lonely ever again!”

  “Really?” Isaac said, looking at them, his big, blue eyes magnified by his glasses. “Can you do that right away? Before the end of the school year? That would mean a lot to me! Let’s go now!”

  He started to smile.

  “Good work,” Noel hissed to Sean. “You’ve gained his trust. Now use the net!”

  “I’m not going to use the net,” Sean said, frowning. “Let’s just take him back to the donkey cart and reprogram his brain.”

  “Sure,” Noel said.

  They rose to leave and started towards the side exit of the auditorium. As they went, they noticed the principal had begun giving another speech while they’d been chatting about brain reprogramming. Sean hadn’t been listening and so didn’t know what the speech was about, but the chart on an easel behind Principal Rogers showed a pancake, a drill press, and a grizzly bear, so it was probably very exciting.

  As Sean neared the side exit, though, something even more exciting happened. The rear wall of the auditorium exploded.

  Chapter 21

  Everyone was suddenly showered with crumbling bricks, plaster, and other debris as a tank bristling with weaponry rolled through the remnants of the back wall, crushing stray wooden boards to splinters as it went.

  Principal Rogers yelped and ducked behind the podium.

  “Oh God, it’s the school board!” he shouted. “They’ve come for me at last!”

  “How heavily armed is your school board?” Noel demanded.

  Sean, however, didn’t think this tank had been deployed by the school board, because it had the words “General OmniAll 67th Accounts Payable Armored Division,” sprayed across the side. Machine guns on the front of the vehicle sprayed bullets wildly around the room. People started to run around screaming.

  Sean and Noel, dragging Isaac with them, hit the ground.

  “Why are they shooting at us?” Sean demanded of Noel as the tank’s turret sent lances of deadly machine gun rounds towards them.

  “General OmniAll is the most brutal company imaginable,” Noel says. “They’re even more secretive than Humancorp! They kill everyone who finds out about them and isn’t supposed to, including their own employees and contractors! I hear they once hunted a man to the ends of the earth just for quitting! OmniAll doesn’t want anyone to know they exist.”

  “Why did they stamp their name on the side of the tank then?”

  “Branding, I guess?” said Noel.

  Another spread of gun rounds rocketed over them. One thudded uncomfortably into Sean. Horrible pain raced through his shoulder.

  “I’ve been shot,” he said, pressing his hand to his arm and seeing a red substance flow out. “I hope that’s the ketchup I stole earlier.”

  He licked some of the red substance off his arm.

  “No, that’s blood,” he confirmed.

  From his prone position, Noel eyed the wound unhappily.

  “I think that wound could be fatal,” he advised Sean.

  “Oh no,” Sean cried. “I’m too ugly to die!”

  More machine gun rounds whizzed overhead.

  Sean winced as the pain in his arm grew.

  “It really hurts,” he said.

  “Here. Take this for the pain,” said Noel, and tried to shove a suicide pill into his hand.

  “No,” Sean said. “You’re a doctor, aren’t you? Help me!”

  “I’m not a doctor,” Noel said with a frown. “What gave you that idea?”

  His words were punctuated by the steady rat-tat-tat of automatic weapons fire.

  “And even if I were a doctor, I wouldn’t be a medical doctor,” Noel continued. “And even if I were a medical doctor, I wouldn’t be the kind of medical doctor who specializes in shoulders, whatever that is.”

  “Orthopedic surgeon,” Isaac said.

  A bullet pinged next to his head.

  “Damn!” Isaac swore.

  “Don’t you use that language,” Noel said. “We raised you better than that. Sean, you say something to him. You’re his mother.”

  “I’m dying! Help!” Sean said.

  “Swearing on your own mother’s grave!” Noel scolded Isaac.

  “Maybe we should get out of here,” Isaac recommended.

  “Okay,” Noel agreed. “Wait, they probably don’t want to kill you, Isaac. We should use you as a human shield.”

  “We’re not doing that,” Sean said, wincing.

  They crawled forward, out of the auditorium via the side exit, then rose and started to run. Behind them, General OmniAll corporate infantry were flooding the building. Sean, Noel, and Isaac dashed for the parking lot, reaching the donkey cart. Sean fell down into the back, bleeding profusely from his shoulder.

  “Let’s get out of here,” said Noel, plopping Isaac into the cart.

  However, as Noel said this, his cell phone started to ring. Noel picked it up. The caller ID read, “Richest Man in the World.”

  Noel answered it. It was, of course, Richard Dinero.

  “Hi,” Dinero said, snorting snuff as he spoke.

  “Hello, Mr. Dinero,” Noel said politely. “Uh, this might be a bad time.”

  “You’re under attack from General OmniAll, right? I already know. I’ve called in an artillery strike on your position. That’ll take care of ‘em. Can’t have ‘em get their hands on our defective people, can we?”

  “No, sir,” Noel said uncertainly.

  “Wait, we have artillery?” asked Sean, trying to apply pressure to his shoulder as he sat up. “Does every corporation have its own army?”

  “Of course,” Dinero said. “Haven’t you ever heard of the Cola Wars?”

  “Yeah,” Sean said.

  “Two million dead, and that’s not even counting the diabetes. I’ll never forget the Cola Killing Fields.” He shuddered a little, then snorted some more snuff.

  Artillery shells, presumably from Humancorp artillery, started to explode around the auditorium, kicking up huge amounts of dirt as they cacophonously thudded into the building. One round hit the school’s clock tower, causing it to collapse.

  “Wait, are you targeting the buildings?” Sean asked.

  “Yeah,” Dinero said. “That’s where the General OmniAll guys are, isn’t it?”

  “You know those buildings are full of children, right?” asked Sean.

  “I don’t really see how that’s my problem,” Dinero said with a shrug.

  “If you shell the buildings, the children will die! You have to call off the artillery!”

  “Hey, I don’t tell you where to target your artillery. Anyway, I’ll see you after you get back to headquarters with that defective person. Or I won’t. Whatever. I’m easy.”

  He took some snuff and then ended the call. The phone’s screen went dark.

  More explosions rocked the ground behind Sean. Still bleeding heavily from his injured arm and shoulder, he gawked at the display of firepower. The school buildings seemed almost engulfed by explosions.

  The donkey pawed at the ground nervously, and the cart driver surveyed the scene with considerable apprehension.

  “We ought to save those children,” the cart driver said.

  “You’re right,” Sean said. “Let’s go save them.”

  “Why?” demanded Noel. “What have they ever done for us?”

  “Just hush and come help me,” Sean said, then despite his injuries and the considerable danger, ran back towards the explosions. Many children were already flooding out of the building with their parents and teachers, but Sean ignored them and ran past them, into the sc
hool building. He searched the auditorium and went through the classrooms, freeing several children he found trapped or panicked, then ran outside with them, the explosions making the building shutter around him.

  Sean and Noel rushed back to the relative safety of the parking lot with more than a dozen children in tow.

  Everyone cheered when they saw him do this.

  “You’re a hero!” Noel said to Sean. “You’d probably be more of a hero if you hadn’t looted as we went.”

  Sean said nothing but stuffed a soccer trophy down his shirt.

  More blasts from the artillery caused the ground to bob like an earthquake.

  “Oh no,” a nearby man shouted suddenly. “The chickens are still trapped in there!”

  “Someone has to save them!” another man agreed. “They’re the future of this school!”

  “Fine,” Sean agreed with a sigh and, still bleeding from his shoulder, raced back through the explosions and into the school, reaching the room where he recalled the chickens to be and herding them out the door with some difficulty.

  Sean returned to the parking lot with the chickens in tow, panting.

  “Right,” he said. “That’s the chickens saved.”

  “But what about the wolves?” said a little boy. “They’ll die if they stay on the field.”

  He pointed to the middle of the explosions, where a pack of wolves were sitting shell-shocked, tongues out as they stared, mesmerized, at the blasts.

  “Fine, fine,” Sean said, and ran back through the shrapnel and the clouds of cordite-scented smoke to rescue the wolves. He ran back soon, two wolves under each arm and a gaggle of them trailing behind him in the net.

  Sean set down the wolves in the parking lot.

  “Is that everything?” he said testily. “I am dying here, you know.”

  “Well, I did leave my pencils-” one girl started.

  “No,” Sean said, with his arms crossed.

  “Oh, that’s too bad,” the girl said, and started to cry.

  Sean, however, wasn’t swayed.

  “Oh no,” Isaac said suddenly. “Now the wolves are eating the chickens!”

  Sean whipped around to see the wolves were, in fact, eating the chickens.

  “We’d better separate them,” said Noel. “Put the wolves and chickens on opposite sides of the children from each other. Use the net.”

  Grumbling a little, Sean netted the wolves and dragged them to the other side of the crowd of people, then returned to the cart.

  “Anything else?” he said.

  “No,” said Noel.

  “Actually, now the wolves are eating the children,” Isaac observed, and tugged Sean by the shirt-sleeve.

  “They’ll have to sort that out on their own,” Sean said even more testily, then fell backwards into the cart to bleed in peace. He checked to make sure he still had his lapel pin - he did.

  “Great,” Noel said. “Now, let’s go back to Humancorp.”

  “Actually, can you please take me to a doctor?” Sean said. “I think I’m dying.”

  “We’ll have to take you to a Humancorp-approved doctor,” said Noel. “Here’s the thing. I don’t think the company gives us healthcare. We’ll have to check when we get back. Cart driver, can you get us out of here?”

  “Can and will,” the cart driver said. He cracked his whip. The donkey lurched into motion.

  Behind them, the school burned and exploded in the background.

  “What happened to the General OmniAll people?” asked Sean.

  “Oh, they retreated when the shells started falling,” said Noel. “You’d have to be some kind of idiot to run into that school in the middle of an artillery barrage.”

  “Gee, thanks,” Sean muttered. Everything was getting hazy. He must have lost a lot of blood.

  As the donkey trotted out of the parking lot, a final few shells dropped on the school, and the main school building collapsed. Behind them, Principal Rogers turned to face the crowd.

  “The school has been destroyed,” he said. “You know what that means: big insurance payout! Tahiti here I come!”

  “Did you have personal insurance out on the school?” asked Noel.

  “How I run my school is my business,” Rogers bellowed back.

  The donkey picked up speed and carried them swiftly away from Rogers, until finally, they disappeared in a blue flash as the time-space continuum twisted around them.

  Just before they teleported away, Sean sighed and shook his head.

  “This is exactly why I don’t like public schools,” he said.

  Chapter 22

  Sean stayed conscious just long enough to glimpse them returning to the laboratory and Isaac stepping out of the donkey cart uncertainly. Then, Sean passed out. What seemed to him like a moment later, he woke up in a sterile, white room. It was arranged like a waiting room, with a handful of benches and tables with magazines, but at the same time it had a distinctly medical feel to it. Sean’s head lolled.

  “Did I pass out?” he asked of Noel.

  “Yes,” Noel said. “It was due to blood loss plus stress from our temporal-spatial-donkey shift. Here, take this.”

  Noel handed him a pill.

  Sean squinted at it.

  “Is this another suicide pill?”

  “No. Take it.”

  Sean shook his head.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a homicide pill,” Noel admitted.

  “Who in the world would want a homicide pill?” asked Sean.

  “Texas State Corrections Department has put in an order for a thousand,” Noel said. “And serial killers. Serial killers are very well respected in some parts of Nevada, you know.”

  Sean frowned and threw it away.

  “Where are we?” he asked. He noticed that Noel had crudely administered a bandage to his shoulder, but he was still bleeding profusely.

  “The Humancorp corporate medical wing,” said Noel. “I took you here because I thought it might reflect badly on me as a manager if you, my only subordinate, died on your first day at work.”

  “Then why do you keep offering me suicide pills?”

  “That’s different,” Noel snapped. “Anyway, Isaac is waiting very patiently for us back in the laboratory to zap his brain healthy. I may have, uh, restrained him.”

  “You netted him, didn’t you?” demanded Sean.

  Noel’s eyes became evasive.

  “Never mind that,” Noel said hastily. “I dragged you over to the medical wing, but I’m not, uh, sure that the company exactly provides us with healthcare.”

  Sean reached over into his jacket with his good arm and pulled out the corporate handbook, and flipped it open to the page on healthcare.

  “Our official healthcare policy is that every employee should avoid illness or injury, and not become sick or injured without prior authorization from his or her or its manager. However, if you do become ill or injured, you may seek healthcare from one of our company staff physicians, and only from one of our company staff physicians, at ruinous cost. The balance will be deducted from your paycheck or organs, if any. On the plus side, we do provide an extremely high quality dental plan. Try to inform human resources before dying on the job. Ideally, you should be able to train your own replacement before dying. If you train him well enough, no one ever even need realize you died! That said, dying without permission may be viewed as an act of disloyalty and your ghost will have his pay docked.”

  Sean was a little disappointed as he read this. As blood gushed out of his arm in little geysers, he wished he had healthcare.

  It’s been brought to my attention that some of you reading this book are British, Canadian or, God help us, French, so I may have to explain that unlike you bunch of lazy socialist bomb-throwers, we in the United States have to pay for our healthcare and bleed to death on the floor for lack of money or insurance like men, unlike you namby-pamby foreigners who are going to live long enough to hug your grandchildren. This is especiall
y true for those of us who don’t have employer-provided healthcare because we are independent writers of satirical e-books who are turning 26 this year (the age at which you are no longer eligible for coverage under your parents’ insurance pursuant to the Affordable Care Act).

  Sean was only 24, but his parents had sadly never bothered to extend their healthcare coverage to him on the grounds that he wasn’t worth it, so he was left at the mercy of Humancorp’s penny-pinching, nickel-squeezing, dime-groping ways. He bled unpleasantly onto his seat and the floor. Everything started to swim and twist in his vision as he became weak from the blood loss.

  The door to what Sean hoped was an emergency room opened, and a female nurse emerged.

  “Sean Gregory Woods?” she called.

  Hoisting Sean’s arm over one shoulder, Noel followed the nurse and steered Sean into what Sean sincerely hoped was some kind of surgery center. He was led into a room with whitish walls and a large chair, which he fell into heavily. Above him was a television, tuned to a news network.

  The female nurse left without another word, and a moment later, a grinning man in scrubs and rubber gloves walked into the room. He had a full face and a shiny, white smile.

  “Good afternoon,” said the man. “I’m Dr. Pokes. You must be Sean. I’m very pleased to meet you. How are you, Sean?”

  “I’ve been shot,” Sean said.

  “Well, these things happen,” Dr. Pokes said sympathetically. “Let’s just get your checkup started, shall we?”

  He reached over to a jar on a nearby linoleum counter-top and produced a little wooden stick.

  “Say ‘ah’,” he told Sean.

  “Aw?” Sean said, and Dr. Pokes stuck the stick roughly in his mouth, then produced a little flashlight which he shined at Sean’s tongue.

  “Oh, yes, it’s good that you came to see me,” Dr. Pokes said. “Your teeth aren’t clean at all.”

  “Wait,” Noel said. “Are you a dentist?”

  “Of course,” Dr. Pokes said. “We’re all dentists here. Humancorp Incorporated only has a dental plan.”

  “But he’s been shot,” Noel objected.